Plugins + Scripts Timeline

[Aipas]

@raven37
Try changing the penultimate keyframes to linear instead of smooth global on the nodes that move when you don't want them to.

 

[raven37]

@raven37
Try changing the penultimate keyframes to linear instead of smooth global on the nodes that move when you don't want them to.

I did that it helped for that specific animation and nothing else. Idk what happened but its like i cant use timeline anymore. just wont work normal now. All of my animation are like this when i make em. logging back in makes em worse i swear. Coping and pasting it onto a new person keeps the bugs. i noticed deleting the next keframe removes the snapping in between the keyframe 1 and 2. its like the keyuframes are choosing to rotate in the wrong direction or something idk. Timeline is what i use vam for so id like to figure this out

Edit: turned on ensure quarternion continuty and it continued to be buggy. turned off loop and the bugs were almost gone. turned back off continuity now the animation is normal no matter if loop/ensure continuity are on or off. idk why it works now but it does

 

[DarwinsTripod]

Hey Man. Fantastic plugin. Honestly i'd be lost without it, However I have been experiencing something odd that hopefully someone can help me with.

I'm not sure how best to explain this. perhaps it has something to do with a setting.
A few times now while setting an object as a target. the animation works fine but the atom will continue to move past the destination and return back. For example. If i set the height so an atom will move from 0 to 0.600 between two moments for some reason it gets to the second point and continues up to 0.650 before returning and unfortunately is breaking the scene. in many cases, i'm having to put a third point at 0.600 1 frame after the other to fix it.

Edit: It's like its moving before and after the keyframe, like its trying to get a running start.

I'm guessing there must be a simple fix or that i'm doing something silly.

Hopefully you understand what i'm getting at, thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Aipas]

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about animation curves.
Each keyframe has a curve associated with it. Think of curves as a way to configure the start and end motions of keyframes.
Try changing the curves of the keyframes giving you problems to linear.
Be carefull, as linear keyframes 100% respect the movement you want, make make it seem unnatural, especially on person atoms.

 

[Gerald123]

Didn't find this in search, so asking here: is it by design that Timeline plugin is not saving the range of the morph? I select the morph (default range from 0 to 1), increase the range in plugin UI (now the range is from 0 to 2), and create a simple animation where the value of the morph is changing from 0 to 2 and back to 0. Press play, it working. But if I save the scene and open it again later, the range of this morph inside the plugin is default again (from 0 to 1). Funny that animation is actually playing morph value from 0 to 2, but real morph state changing from 0 to 1 and then stuck. When animation value goes back from 2 to 0, real morph begin to change only after value goes below 1 to 0. If I manually increase the range of the morph again, all works perfectly again. How to fix this?

 

[DarwinsTripod]

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about animation curves.
Each keyframe has a curve associated with it. Think of curves as a way to configure the start and end motions of keyframes.
Try changing the curves of the keyframes giving you problems to linear.
Be carefull, as linear keyframes 100% respect the movement you want, make make it seem unnatural, especially on person atoms.

I'll give it a look it's quite possible that that is whats going on, but these curves behave very strangely sometimes, it's not a problem i always encounter, but sometimes it's very jarring. Meaning i'm happy for it to curve but when there are two point with identical co-ordinates i figured it shouldn't moving around in between. I'd assumed the curves were for smoothing etc..

Edit. Yeah thank's a bunch. it does seem to be animation curves. for this one particular atom they were acting strangely, (curves when unnecessary) changing just those key frames to linear fixed it as expected.

Thanks again

 

[Aipas]

No problem.
Sometimes keyframes do get a bit crazy. Redoing or copy pasting them often solves the issue as well.
When you have weird rotations you can also unckeck "ensure quaternion continuity" on edit tab.

Cheers.

 

[Superlative]

Hello there,

I'm new here, english isn't my first language so I'll try my best. I'm starting to mess with Timeline, and it's amazing ! Thanks AcidBubbles for that
However I encountered the same problem twice now, and didn't find any other person mentionning it anywhere on the internet :


So, I made two animations (each on two layers ; one for body poses, the other for facial expressions), containing some geometry targets (both anims have the same targets).
All of a sudden, the geometries on the "expressions" layer of both anims stopped affecting the Person's actual face when animations run.

Some informations :
- Geometries sliders will still move in Target tab, as defined by keyframes.
- Adding a new geometry works. Only the ones present "before the bug" are stuck.
- Moving the bugged geometries sliders in Female Morph tab works ; the Person's face is affected. So the problem is within Timeline.
- Removing a bugged geometry target and adding it again doesn't work.
- Exporting and importing animations doesn't resolve the problem. Same with layer.
- Recall: The problem only affected the anims on the second layer. On the first layer, present geometries still work and btw they are the same kind (poses, not morphs).

I can't tell exactly the moment and the cause of this, as I noticed it randomly after some time, but :
- Only thing that changed since last time I worked on the scene was me activating "Realtime LipSync" and "Vammoan" plugins on the Person (plugins were already there, just disabled). Don't know if it can generate some conflicts.
- MacGruber's life (breathing) was active all along.

It really acts like those specific targets were doomed by that iteration of the timeline plugin.
For now the only solution I found is to export all animations, delete Timeline plugin from the Person, and add a new one and import anims.

 

[Aipas]

Vammoan and lipsync working together will sometimes cause some issues / weirdness when it comes to mouth morphs, when the person atom is talking and breathing at the same time. Uncheking "enable auto jaw" on vam moan fixes it (if I remember correctly). I think Vammoan 2 improves that functionality, but haven't tried it yet.

As for your problem, maybe you have morphs that are driven by / drive other morphs, and create a conflict?
Like, say, if you have a left hand fist on anim 1 / layer 1, and left index finger bend on anim 1 / layer 2.
One of them won't work because they're conflicting. I tested to make sure and left hand fist did nothing on layer 1.
Given you have plugins that control breathing morphs maybe those can be the issue? If audio is playing on headaudio source it might also conflict with phoneme morphs (I think).
Or stuff like smiles, which sometimes drive other morphs.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Would it be possible to have an enhancement for Timeline that specifically avoids storing morph values that are supposed to be under active control of another plugin? Specifically, the morphs used by Tittymagic/Bootymagic/Naturalis currently get baked into the poses stored by Timeline. If you disable those plugins, the morph values are still there, in the timeline, which can play havoc with model appearance. Fortunately, all the TM/BM morphs have a prefix of BM_ TM_ or TM5. In an ideal case, we could specify to Timeline a set of strings to match for morphs to ignore when saving poses. The breathing morphs do that too, but it's the BM/TM morphs that are most apparent.

 

[DarwinsTripod]

I have a new question. Once again congrats. This plug in is essential. I'm pretty sure almost everyone uses it.

My question is that, I'm not sure what setting is causing this but in my most recent animations, (ever since the latest update i think) even when set to not loop as the animation finishes one or more of my controllers are jumping back to the start location. I have no idea what is causing this as i never had a problem before and i'm just a little lost as to why it is doing it now. If helps this is the first time i have been using it with multiple timelines open running concurrently but everything else is working as expected.

Thank for any help you can offer.

 

[Aipas]

Sequence and / or layers might cause some issues if not configured correctly.
Describe the movement you're trying to do, if you're playing one animation or all, if your atoms are synched, if you have a master atom, etc.
A short video or animated gif could help.

 

[Aipas]

Could also be caused by poses, depending on situation.

 

[DarwinsTripod]

Sequence and / or layers might cause some issues if not configured correctly.
Describe the movement you're trying to do, if you're playing one animation or all, if your atoms are synched, if you have a master atom, etc.
A short video or animated gif could help.

Hey there. So i'm using a person atom and a few others as tentacles. I'm not using layers but they are all named the same, same length and they all play together without any problems at all. however. as soon as it gets to the end. the main penetrator tenacle suddenly jumps back to it's start position. I have the person atom as the master atom, I've looked at sequence and can't see anything unusual.
I do have the tip parented to the person atom. but i don't see why that should be causing an issue. The animation ends and all control points stay where they are except for that one though it always jumps back to it's starting location.

I'm a bit of an old head so although pretty computer literate I don't know i'm doing when it comes to creating a gif and a screen capture full size would be overkill. I'm pretty sure i've got everything relevant there though.

I shall have a further play now.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Perhaps you need a final keyframe on the timeline for that atom that duplicates the first one.

 

[Aipas]

Parenting atoms or nodes may lead to some weirdness if they also have keyframes in timeline. It also depends on how you parent (parent to object / control, parent with physics link or parent link).

There's also a parent method in timeline, which works best if you want to keep a node parented for a specific animation, as in the next or previous anim you can unparent it.

Try SlimerJSpud's suggestion. You said your animations is not a loop, so copy paste the first frame, or if that's not applicable / doesn't work, select the node in question, go to "more" --> advanced keyframe tools --> keyframe pose (animated targest only).

I'd mention curves again, but if it's going back to the initial position, it's porbably not that.

 

[DarwinsTripod]

Parenting atoms or nodes may lead to some weirdness if they also have keyframes in timeline. It also depends on how you parent (parent to object / control, parent with physics link or parent link).

There's also a parent method in timeline, which works best if you want to keep a node parented for a specific animation, as in the next or previous anim you can unparent it.

Try SlimerJSpud's suggestion. You said your animations is not a loop, so copy paste the first frame, or if that's not applicable / doesn't work, select the node in question, go to "more" --> advanced keyframe tools --> keyframe pose (animated targest only).

I'd mention curves again, but if it's going back to the initial position, it's porbably not that.

Yeah cheers guys.

Not really sure whats going on. I have it parented through timeline. I've done similar things before and i'm really not sure why i'm getting this effect this time.

obviously if anyone works out whats going on i'd be keen to find out but in the meantime i have just extended it a touch and put the beginning frame at the end. although it's not ideal it had stopped the "jump and mostly still works as id intended.

Cheers anyway you are all wonderful. xx

 

[CabaretNoir]

Does anyone know how to prevent Timeline from storing poses for animations that do not contain any character control targets?

E.g. trigger track on separate layer, Timeline seems to think there should be a pose attached to the anim, so chucks in the first pose it can find, but a) there shouldn't be a pose and b) it can't be cleared.

Driving me nuts! Can't even advance through the anim to add triggers without the character flying off to wherever.

Please help, my monitor is new and I don't want to hurt it.

 

[Ghostwalden]

I just noticed, that it's not possible to change length to (s) in 0.001 and 0.01, only 0.1 and +1 works.
Would be great to have these smaller steps for a next update.

 

[who_dis]

Is it possible to have a single controller affected by multiple animations? For example, a non-looping animation to move the head back and forth, and a looping animation to move it left and right - the idea being to have constant left/right motion, while being able to control the heads back/forth position with a UI slider affecting the scrubber. Appreciate any insights, sorry if this is a noob question lol

 

[Aipas]

Is it possible to have a single controller affected by multiple animations? For example, a non-looping animation to move the head back and forth, and a looping animation to move it left and right - the idea being to have constant left/right motion, while being able to control the heads back/forth position with a UI slider affecting the scrubber. Appreciate any insights, sorry if this is a noob question lol

Don't think it's possible, but I'm not an expert.
What you can do is have the left-right loop and then apply a cycle force to the head, with the slider controlling the force, which would result in a back and forth motion.

 

[who_dis]

Don't think it's possible, but I'm not an expert.
What you can do is have the left-right loop and then apply a cycle force to the head, with the slider controlling the force, which would result in a back and forth motion.

Thank you for the response, this comes very close to what im trying to achieve, except in this scenario the head would be cycling forward/back (unless there's a way to toggle that off that im not aware of). Im trying to make the forward/back more like a set position, which can be adjusted with a slider.

edit: Thanks to your comment i found the force plugin, which did the trick. Thanks again

 

[Aipas]

Thank you for the response, this comes very close to what im trying to achieve, except in this scenario the head would be cycling forward/back (unless there's a way to toggle that off that im not aware of). Im trying to make the forward/back more like a set position, which can be adjusted with a slider.

There is. Can't recall the name of the option without looking at it, but cycle forces can disable the loop.
Matter of fact, I've used a similar "technique" in a test scene, except the motion was directly controlled by mouse, and the cycle force would produce a resistance factor based on distance.

I think I know what you're trying to achieve. There's also sync forces to make it more fancy. Sync a force to the main one and you can get an extra motion (either axis rotation or a bit of up and down).

 

[D-Rock]

I'm having a very frustrating issue with timeline not saving my poses, and when I clear the pose, the button to save the pose doesn't work anymore.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

I'm having a very frustrating issue with timeline not saving my poses, and when I clear the pose, the button to save the pose doesn't work anymore.

You have to be in Stop mode in Timeline for pose saving to work. Freeze mode from the main UI doesn't do it.